From time immemorial Catholic Christianity has reserved a special place for the cult of the saints. Devotion to the saints found expression everywhere: parish churches were named for them; their relics were venerated; their statues were displayed; and the feasts of certain saints were the subject of folk festivals. Catholics wore medals, assumed saints’ names at baptism, and journeyed on pilgrimages to the shrines of saints. Monastic communities rose in the middle of the night to listen to the stories of saints on their feast days and to hear selections from their writings chanted in Matins. The saints were much more than role models. As icons of the risen Christ—one whose witness makes Christ present—they were an indispensable part of piety and faith. Through communion with them, Christians encountered Jesus Christ as he continued to manifest his Resurrection in the church.
How does that traditional understanding and appreciation of the saints fit into modern American Catholicism? I would argue that the renewed emphasis on Christ-centered Christian spirituality in the post-Vatican II church, most powerfully shaped by the reformed liturgy and calendar, has unintentionally resulted in a diminution if not the displacement of the saints.
Nearly thirty years after Vatican II, Catholic faith is more squarely centered on Jesus Christ than many—especially the church’s critics—could ever have imagined. Features of the tradition which historically had distracted this focus—Mary and the saints, the anathemas against other religions, and the quirky devotional practices of some Catholics—have been cut down to size. Whatever the ecclesiastical or theological issues facing today’s church, the centrality of Jesus Christ is understood by all parties as paramount.
As the axiom lex orandi, lex credendi (literally, “the law of prayer is the law of belief; or “worship shapes belief”) suggests, great change begins in worship. I believe the liturgical renewal authorized by the council is responsible for the rise of what I’ve called Christ-centered Catholicism. But need devotion to the saints stand in competition to Christ-centered Catholicism? I don’t think so. On the contrary, the cult of the saints is a source—now largely untapped—capable of enlarging and strengthening faith.
Baptism is an important example of the move to Christ-centered Catholicism. Its meaning has been the subject of intense debate. No matter what position one endorses on the various questions associated with this sacrament, one change is clear: baptism is no longer merely a purification rite from Original Sin. The biblical paradigms, new texts, normative setting at the Paschal vigil, and immersion in the water bath—all provisions of the new ritual—teach that baptism is death and resurrection into Christ. To correct old, well-worn language, it is baptism, not ordination, which makes one an alter Christus…another Christ.
The liturgical calendar and the lectionary are two other less obvious, but no less significant, reforms that have established Christ-centered Catholicism. Both bear special responsibility for what has occurred to the saints. In calling for the preparation of a new calendar, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (1963) affirmed the two poles between which the rhythm of church’s worship occurs: first, the weekly Sunday feast; and second, the annual festival of Easter. The constitution called for the restoration of Sunday as the day each week in which the church “keeps the memory of [the] Resurrection.” Similarly, what Sunday is to be for the week, Easter is for the entire year. Only with the importance of Sunday and of Easter reaffirmed does the constitution acknowledge a role for the feasts of Mary, the martyrs, and saints in general.
Fulfilling the council’s mandate, the 1969 revised calendar greatly affected devotion to the saints: first, it reaffirmed the importance of Sunday, Easter, and the liturgical seasons; and second, it vastly reduced in number the saints awarded a place on the calendar. The paring of the calendar left many open spaces, thus creating a larger number of “ferials”—days on which no feast is appointed—than the church had known in centuries.
Ferials are not new. The calendar of Trent (1568) had provided for them. However, before Vatican II, ferials were readily dispensed with. Usually Masses for the dead or votive Masses replaced them. Ferials have now assumed a positive identity and are preferred over the observances surrounding obscure saints. By their use, Sunday is extended throughout the week, thus both enhancing the character of Sunday worship and diminishing the unique liturgical piety of weekday Masses. This attenuation of the saints is compounded by the fact that even the saints who have survived are generally given little special attention in the daily liturgy. Prior to Vatican II, the Scriptures usually read on a minor saint’s day were selected from a standard or “common” set of readings proper to virgins, confessors, martyrs, bishops, etc. The usual practice now, however, is for the readings to follow the weekday lectionary readings which are ongoing and seasonal in theme. The observance of a saint means little more than celebrating the liturgy in a vestment of different color than Sunday’s, and perhaps one or two different prayers. Too often the Scripture and the homily will refer to the season, not the saint. The coordination of sacramentary, music, vesture, lectionary, and preaching, all required for an effective celebration of a saint’s feast, is a rarity.
A few months after the new calendar was issued, the Lectionary for Mass appeared. The first objective of the calendar, the restoration of the Lord’s Day, was reenforced by the new lectionary and the renaissance it inaugurated in biblical preaching. The shift from topical sermon to biblical homily, promoted by the lectionary, has had a vast impact on Catholic thought and practice. With the homily preferred over the sermon, the Jesus of the gospels inescapably has become almost the sole topic of preaching. The Sunday gospels provide a sustained and progressive Christological program, which, uncomplemented by the perspective of tradition, equates Christianity almost solely with the gospel figure of Jesus. Whereas Catholic Christianity has always sought to identify the risen Christ in an encounter with him in the living tradition, now, with preaching so biblical, Catholicism has found itself cast loose from its familiar moorings. When the Jesus of the gospels becomes the subject of every homily, he inevitably becomes our exclusive model. This reduces the lived incarnational dimension of Christianity, which offered, however fantastic might have been its exaggerations, devotion to the saints. Instead of human figures with whose likeness to Christ one might identify, Jesus has become the universal patron saint. With the saints eclipsed by Christ, little wonder that there has been such speculation in Catholicism regarding the humanity of Jesus, his conception, his call to mission, the failure he experienced, and even his doubt. This is where the unchallenged success of lectionary preaching has led the church. One wonders if the authors of the calendar and the lectionary anticipated how a dominical liturgy would not only sharply define Sundays, but, by displacing the saints, diminish the church’s imagination of and hope for the resurrection of all the dead.
Christianity must be nothing but Christ-centered, argue many sincere Catholics. If anything, the old devotion to the saints trespassed beyond reason and all bounds. If the faith is now unambiguously Christ-centered, it is argued, and if, in the process, the saints have been moved to the periphery, this is all for the good.
But, I would maintain, it is an error to limit the saints to serving as mere role models. The tradition has always upheld that in our communion with the saints, Christians, in fact, encounter Christ. Lumen Gentium explains the tradition thus: “It is not only by the title of example that we cherish the memory of those in heaven. In the lives of those who shared in our humanity and yet were transformed into especially successful images of Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18), God vividly manifests to [us] his presence and his face.”
While a Christianity that finds its inspiration in the Jesus of the gospels might be nourished by preaching on Christ’s passage through locked doors, or on the appearance of Christ to the disciples fishing in Peter’s boat, such a narrow homiletic forecloses the encounter with Christ as he is also known in the life of the community and in the lives of the saints. Under various titles, most notably, the Mystical Body of Christ and the Communion of Saints, the church has upheld this broader intuition and conviction.
The validity of encountering Christ in this traditional Catholic fashion is everywhere evident. In fact, the New Testament itself introduces it, as it quickly moves beyond Easter appearances to accounts of the risen Christ revealing himself in others. En route to Damascus, Saul is blinded and interrogated by heaven: “ ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’ ” (Acts 9:4-5).
Paul teaches that the community is the Body of Christ when he castigates the Corinthians for celebrating the Eucharist amid grave incivility: “For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves” (1 Cor. 11:29).
In Matthew, judgment day holds reversals and surprises for all. The king pronounces, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Matt. 25:45). It is more than in the community, however, that the risen Jesus is encountered. From its beginning, the church perceived in the martyrs—the first saints—the ultimate achievement. Their imitation of Christ was perfect to the point of likeness to Jesus in his suffering death. In this, the martyrs provided more than example. They served as living icons through whom Christians could encounter the Lord. This identity is nowhere more explicit than in the description in Acts of the Apostles of the first martyrdom. The death of Stephen is patterned upon that of Jesus: “While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them,’ and with that he died” (Acts 7:59-60).
Accounts of the ancient martyrs, extant from early centuries, are as impressive in their vividness as they are significant in their numbers. Their iconic relationship to the crucified Lord so explicit, the martyrs exercised a formative influence upon the church during its initial centuries. A provocative example is the second-century account of several martyrs which occurred in Vienne and Lyons. Christians from the East had settled in these cities of Roman Gaul during the first and second centuries. A large number were martyred in a.d. 177. The account describes the crucifixion of the slave woman Blandina. The reasons offered by the Vatican against the ordination of women make it particularly relevant today:
Blandina hung on her post, exposed as bait for the wild animals. She hung in the form of a cross, and by her fervent prayer she stirred intense enthusiasm in those who were undergoing their own ordeal. In their torment, with their physical eyes, they saw in the person of their sister him who was crucified for them, that he might convince all who believe in him that all who suffer for Christ’s glory will have eternal fellowship in the living God.
After this early understanding of sainthood, the tradition adapted. Sainthood was broadened beyond martyrdom and its imitative significance to include a new category, confessors. These were those who had suffered torture or imprisonment for the faith, but not death itself.
When Christianity was afforded imperial sanction in the fourth century, imprisonments and executions abated. Sainthood needed to be interpreted even more liberally. Without martyrs or the imprisoned from whom to choose, the church turned to nuns, monks, and desert eremites. Their entire lives had been delivered over to the lived martyrdom, as it were, of prayer, self-denial, and good deeds. Eventually the church would forsake entirely the requirement of martyrdom, even loosely defined, for recognition of sanctity.
In diminishing the church’s ancient sense of the saint as icon of Christ, the post-Vatican II church has also lost the insight of Paul: “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:17-18). Unlike our forebears in the faith, modern Christians rarely regard the saints as manifestations of the crucified and risen Lord. The few exceptions—for example, the stigmatic Francis of Assisi—prove the rule. Perhaps the reason why so many support the sidelining of the saints is because the meaning of sainthood had been allowed to become so diffuse.
Christ-centered Christianity has compromised an indispensable expression of Catholicism. How can we reassert the saints, not only without prejudice to Christ-centeredness, but as support to it? I offer eight suggestions:
-
Parish and religious communities restore liturgical and cultural celebrations of those saints who enjoy regional, national, or particular significance, and that they do this on weekdays.
2. As everything from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade to St. 16: 23 October 1992 Joseph’s Day pastries so amply show, it is the genius of Catholic tradition that faith and culture be one. Customs that honor the saints should be esteemed. Where they have been lost, restored. Where they are lacking, created.
3. A saint’s name should be taken at baptism. Are we not raising a generation of Heathers that one day will rise against us?
4. Conscious of how poorly the hyperbole that marked most Christian hagiography serves today’s critical age, pastoral scholarship should provide new, inventive methods for telling the stories of the saints.
5. Reform in the process of naming saints should continue, so that the canon better shows the risen Lord revealed in the lives of all the baptized, of women as well as men, of lay as well as cleric, of those from South and East, as well as those of North and West.
6. With common sense and mature judgment prevailing, that the stories of the saints should be restored to religious formation and preaching.
7. Appreciation of the Communion of Saints should be restored, and, with it, renewed recourse to the intercessory power of the saints.
8. Let East meet West. The Roman Catholic tradition has everything to learn from Orthodoxy’s reverence of icons. What is needed now is a rediscovery of the prime theological insight that the saints are important because they are an encounter with Jesus Christ. It is this that Gerard Manley Hopkins acknowledges with praise and wonder in “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”:
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
